Bloodwrath
(Thursday. dress: casual)
Chris Lane
Copyright 2012 Chris Lane
Smashwords Edition
Copyright © Chris Lane 2011
This novel is a work of fiction. All names of persons and characters described are the work of the author’s disturbed imagination and any resemblance to real persons should be treated as very worrying and I suggest you seriously rethink your lifestyle and personality.
The incidents portrayed are also all fictitious, though some are loosely based on my own personal experiences (not the killings).
Names of places, publications, companies and organisations are a mixture of real (if I say nice things) and fictitious (if you don’t like what I say I didn’t mean you, it is a coincidence).
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored electronically or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical, electronic, quill and parchment, carrier pigeon, spirit messages, etc. without permission of the author.
Further information about the stage works of Chris Lane and contact details at
www.pantoscripts.co.uk
BLOODWRATH
Ϯ
The spear wall. No longer the wooden sticks of childhood. If Grun failed this time it would not be the heavy fist of Gram-the-One-Eyed beating him about the head. It would be death.
“Dozey tosser.”
Grun’s legs could barely move. They had driven him through the storm across the wasteland of Scun-ar-crag and climbed the sheer sides of Pen-y-crunk. Now they struggled to hold him upright in the blood-rich mud of the final battle.
But his arms were filled with the love of battle. Skull-cleaver sang, held high above his head, its blade slicing through the very rain. His wooden shield was no more than splinters clinging to a reindeer-hide strap. He cast it aside.
Orin, as always standing beside him, blood flowing from the deep wound in his arm, looked down at Grun’s smashed shield and laughed.
Louder. “Dozey tosser.”
Grun knew he must face the enemy who had slain his people, who had taken his mother and sister into slavery, and who had cursed the name of his Gods. But more, he must face the spear wall or never be called a man.
With his blood-wet fingers gripped tightly about Skull-cleaver’s handle he launched himself from the mud and ran to the spear-wall, the war-cry of his father reborn on his own lips. That great cry filled the air, and was echoed by a thousand warriors.
“Oy! Wake up you dozy tosser!”
“What?”
“I’ve ‘ad me ‘and up for hours. ‘Ow much longer have we got?”
“Er ...” Roger Hamilton twisted round in his chair and looked up at the clock high on the end wall of the gym. “Another fifty minutes.” What was the matter with the boy? The exam’s finishing time was clearly written on the white-board.
“Fifty minutes.” The boy slumped his arms onto the small desk, sagged his upper bodyweight onto them and looked around the hall. “This is fuckin’ borin’.”
The other thirty-seven pupils leant deeper over the exam papers and ignored him as he gurned at them. He didn’t like being ignored. He eased himself to one side and farted. He sniggered and looked round. One other boy grinned and mouthed the words ‘nice one’, but the others had heard farts before – and this wasn’t even a good one.
Hamilton tried to pretend he was reading his book again. The boy noisily fanned the fart away with his exam paper. Hamilton sighed, caught the boy’s attention and made a ‘Shhh’ sign with fore-finger at lips. The boy mimicked the symbol, with his middle finger stuck up in the air, and began tapping his pen on the desk.
Roger Hamilton knew he had to do something. He also knew that whatever his ‘something’ was it would do no good. It would fail like this:
You need to be quiet. People are trying to work.
Oh, fuck off. This is fuckin’ borin’. It’s only maths. Who gives a shit?
And that is no way to speak. This may indeed ‘only be maths’ but these other students here have chosen to sit it again to reach a higher grade than they got in the summer.
Yeah. Right. Well I didn’t bloody choose.
If this carries on I will report you to your Year-Head.
Ooh. Really afraid. (Loudly) Oh no – don’t put me on report again!
That’s enough. One more...
And what?
Well – I’ll send you out.
Fuckin’ brilliant – that’s what I want to do anyway.
In Roger’s imagination the boy then gets up, throws chair to floor. Shouts obscene words as he leaves. Slams door. Stands outside banging on the glass and shouting ‘Tossers’. Finally wanders off.
Later that day pupils complain to parents that their exam was ruined.
One self-righteous parent phones school office to complain to Head.
Roger summoned to see Head.
One parent will now, apparently, be called ‘several’ parents.
Failure to control pupils will be pointed out.
Mr Hamilton woke up from his little wallow in self-pity to see the boy had already gone. No fuss. The predicted catalogue of disaster never happened. Problem solved.
Back to the book.
First a quick look round the hall. No more hands up?
No.
Good. He had a little smile. Perhaps he handled it the right way. No confrontation. No swearing. No visit to the Head.
What page was he on?
That great cry filled the air, and was echoed by a thousand warriors. And in the black sky above the mighty armies the gods sent a thunderclap so strong it sucked the air from their lungs and…
When the dustbin hit the window the noise was astonishing. The gym was an echoing shell, so the explosive splintering of glass and the massed screaming worked to best effect. No wonder everyone carried on screaming. Mr Hamilton may have screamed himself, but just the once.
Nobody noticed.
Ϯ
Feeling very depressed and tired Roger returned the book on the large bookshelf in his living room, then just stared at its spine. The books were in categories. They all had a common theme: killing people, but always safely in the vile murk of some less-civilised historical time. The categories therefore were historical periods: Roman, Saxon, Middle Ages, Napoleonic, and so on.
Books about modern-day serial-killers had been visited for a while but they were usually set in Scandinavia so that none of the names of characters or places could be pronounced. Some nice gruesome bits but generally all too similar. A number of these thrillers were in a cardboard box under the bed in the spare room upstairs.
On the bottom shelves were a few reference volumes, mostly history, but the bulk of the books were novels and these were all fundamentally similar stories of loss and revenge or royal power struggles, broken into chunks by moments of violent killing, either man-to-man or in enormous battles that supposedly once actually happened (probably).
Obviously Roger had never killed anyone himself. Not even by accident. Normal thirty-something residents of South Somerset killed nobody, even in the town of Chard; this was England, not the USA or Mexico.
He shuffled aimlessly down the long room, not bothering to put on any lights despite the overcast evening gloom, and stood by the patio doors. Brown leaves were starting to fall from the trees beyond the fence.
He had thought about killing a cat once. Not just any cat; a specific one. The foul brute waited, watching the bird table in Roger's garden. It ate birds. It deserved to die. He even knew how he would do it.
Shooting would cause trouble with the neighbours at the other end of the terrace (‘cat-loving yobs’’) and then more trouble with the Cat Protection League (probably not yobs – just misguided and clinically self-righteous: “My pets have a right to kill and eat your pets”) leading to possible trouble with the police (jolly good fellows hamstrung by bureaucracy and paperwork).
And anyway he had no gun, so his answer was the dustbin.
Put tasty cat-bait inside bin.
Prop bin lid on stick.
Attach lid to long string.
Wait in hiding.
Watch cat get in bin.
Pull string.
Lid falls.
Get hosepipe.
Push under lid.
Turn on tap.
Yowling.
Gurgling.
Wailing.
Drowning.
Chuckling.
For a moment Roger stood in his living room, looking blankly through the double-glazed windows, past the empty bird table and up at the clouds. Now, in his mind, it was the Headmaster in the bin. Also drowning. But not yowling. Possibly wailing. Certainly shouting.
Bloody man.
Bloody moron.
An e-mail had ‘invited’ Roger to see him for a ‘word’ after school on Monday.
Drowning was too good for him.
Roger at last put on some lights and wandered into the corridor, past the bottom of the stairs, and out into the kitchen. This was in a single storey, flat-roofed extension, like many others in Albert Terrace.
There was very little there to show the owner’s personality, unless you counted the key-rack by the back door. There were four sets of house keys hanging there. He had lost his only set once, which had been very time-consuming and expensive and rather embarrassing. In fact there were five sets there if you included the keys he was holding for the neighbours while they were on holiday – just in case there was an emergency. They would be back in a few days if the French air-traffic didn’t strike or any volcanoes erupt.
He leant closer. All five bunches looked the same – one mortise key and one yale - but he identified the neighbours’ keys by the different colour metal of the mortise key.
He waited for the kettle then made a mug of tea.
To get back to the main room he returned into the corridor, turned on the stair light, and went in one of the two doors that led into the long, single living area.
Virtually all the houses in the terrace had knocked through the two rooms in the same way: bay windows at the front end, small window or patio doors at the rear end. Roger was a little different in that his dining area was at the front and the TV and comfortable chairs were at the back.
Both halves of the room had large bookcases, one filled with DVDs and the other with books. Both of the former rooms had gas-fires but only the front room had a sideboard carrying a photo of him with his parents, an empty fruit bowl, and mail waiting to be sorted out.
There were also a few bottles on it, sherry, white rum, red wine, but most unusually (at least for England, possibly not unusual for other – dustier – parts of the globe) the wall above was filled with hanging weapons:
One round Saxon shield.
Two thin duelling swords.
One claymore engraved ‘Braveheart’.
Two rather imaginative swords (‘Lord of the Rings Style’).
Two ‘Saxon-style’ swords.
A Japanese ‘ninja’ sword.
There was also a small painting of Mont St-Michel at high tide (like most of the other objects, bought in France on Roger’s photography holidays). There were also a large numbers of very artistic photos of the Dordogne, Brittany coast, Provence and other sunny places. There were none of Roger; in fact only one photo had a person it – a girlfriend from some years ago, college days, when it was easier to meet suitable females.
An axe (“based on drawings from a Viking drinking cup”: from e-Bay) was too heavy to hang and was still in its box under the sideboard.
He sipped tea and put aside the idea of killing anyone, even ‘cat-lovers’ (which he thought was a very dubious title to be proud of).
Now he was at the other end, by the bay windows, looking out.
Nothing happening in the road, except night was arriving. Albert Terrace was on the higher side of town so had some view, especially from the bedrooms. On the opposite side of the road was a low brick wall edging a recent housing estate which luckily dropped away quite quickly toward the town. Beyond the roofs of Chard were low hills with fields and small areas of woodland. These hills eventually rolled down to the county town Taunton and then the soggy Somerset Levels.
Sipping tea he wandered back to the other end of the room again and closed the patio doors, wondering what to do with the first weekend of the Autumn Term.
Any birds at the bird table? No.
Anything growing in the garden? Nothing he could remember the name of. Some red daisy-type things seemed to be in full flower. The frost would get them.
Any sign of neighbours? Not raining, sky not yet totally dark, so anybody out pottering?
No – all in front of their TVs.
Or doing things.
With friends.
Possibly even girlfriends.
He had some friends at school, a married couple who worked in the PE department, but Roger wasn’t too lucky with his love-life at present. He had achieved some success a few years back, and also had happy memories of a camping holiday near Toulouse but nothing at all since moving to Chard.
At first, with the intention of meeting women, he had joined several clubs. There had been some drunken flirting on Facebook with a woman who did the teas for the football club but he never followed it up and soon got bored with running round in the cold on a Saturday morning and so the team lost a very average player.
The other clubs had mostly passed away, except for the Photography Group and a recent one: the Carnival Committee.
He refocused and studied his reflection: still all his own hair, though perhaps a little old-fashioned in cut. No facial hair, just a longish face with a straight nose.
Not unattractive.
He turned his head slightly to get a hint of profile.
Next he checked his fuller view; as a PE teacher it was no surprise that he was still fit and ‘sporty’ looking. He had a small set of weights under the spare bed and most weeks he managed a few hours.
His focus moved past his reflection, through the glass and out into the gloom.
The top of a head skimmed along, just visible above the fence. The owner was hurrying along the unpaved path that linked the ends of the gardens. Probably someone was putting the dustbins out in the back-lane.
Roger had already done his.
Still no birds. Perhaps some bread might help. He was turning to find some when the front door rattled to three heavy knocks. Officious knocks.
The front door. Not the bell, which had been tested only yesterday on the chance that it might not be working, which could explain a few things.
A knock on the door. Rapped very firmly. In a way – aggressively. Maybe even with a hint of … menace?
At that stage Roger did not think: ‘Whoever it is they will be dead before the night is out because I am a psycho’.
Not really.
Not even a bit.
Or perhaps he did.
Perhaps in his subconscious something evil was muttering: “kill!”
Perhaps.
Probably not though.
The man was asking for it.
A middle-aged, ratty face with oddly long ears – both cluttered with dangling ear-rings and other futile attempts to divert attention from the ugliness of their owner’s face.
Overalls with a homemade badge saying ‘BRITAIN GAS CO’. A clear dark urine patch at the groin.
“Gas,” he explained.
Smiled.
Waved another piece of card, poorly coated in sticky-backed plastic: ‘BRITAIN GAS CO CUSTOMER SERVICE’S’.
Roger stared at him in disbelief. What kind of company for one moment thought that its customers would be interested in any service provided by this tattooed, drug-wizened offspring of alcoholic mothering?
The man was still talking about ‘gas services being disrupted’ and ‘dangers of leaks if pilot lights were still turned on’ when Roger guessed what was happening.
“Do I look like a pensioner?!” he snapped, and slammed the door. Even as he ran back into the living room he knew there was someone else there. Sixth sense? The cool air flowing in from the open patio doors? The sound of wires being pulled out of his DVD player?
It was another like the one at the door. Shorter, younger and even bonier. Greasy hair. Dangling ear-rings. Probably the Britain Gas sub department called ‘Electronic Appliance Removal’.
This man heard the DVD player’s owner come back. He heaved at the DVD player and ripped it free, more interested in it as a weapon than its pub value.
“You fucking little shit!” Roger stamped his foot. “Fucking little shit!!” Which did not help the situation and did not stop the DVD player hitting him very heavily on the chest.
Little Shit lurched for the fireplace to grab a poker.
Gas fire!
No poker!
Cretin!
A real British Gas worker would have noticed that.
While Little Shit was still on one knee Roger leapt to his right, to the weapon wall, and grabbed the closest thing that had some combat value.
The small, glass framed original painting of Mont St-Michel at high tide.
It flew very well and caught Little Shit across the side of the head, just beside the left eye, knocking him back onto his arse. The glass smashed and there was blood. The man’s hand shot up onto the wound. Even before the thief had finished looking at the smear of red on his palm Roger had sought for another weapon. And found one hanging on the wall. It was Saxon (style). It was short, fat and heavy with a chunky leather-wrapped handle. But a sharp blade.
Roger had no doubt that Little Shit was going to kill him, or at least hurt him, as soon as he could get off the ground and find a heavier electrical appliance to throw. Moving quickly Roger stepped around the coffee-table and swung the sword up, around and down, aiming for any part of Little Shit.
Little Shit saw it coming, yelped in what Roger later considered to be an unmanly way, but wisely jerked backwards, banging against the TV screen and ducking. The sword was unstoppable. It hit the top of Little Shit’s head and sliced into the hair. A hard vibration shocked Roger’s wrists then the sword slewed off and clipped the glass of the TV screen. It clanged against the fire surround, badly denting it and covering it in blood.
“Fucking shit!” Roger glared at the damage. That fire was fairly new. And there was blood all over the rug as well. “Shit! Shit! Shit!” His glare turned to Little Shit himself.
The man was on the floor, sitting upright. His hair was over his face, slicked with flowing blood. No – it wasn’t his hair that was over his face. It was his scalp. An area larger than a hand had been sliced from Little Shit’s skull. Dangling. The skull bone was visible above the sheet of sliced flesh, amid a circle of bubbling blood. He seemed stunned, which was not really a surprise.
Roger himself seemed a bit taken aback but he regained control of the sword.
The sudden entry of Big Shit confused him even more. Two thoughts: ‘I slammed the front door’ and ‘but I didn’t hear it click shut’ closely preceded the observation: ‘knife’.
Small knife. But coming toward him rapidly. Roger span in thoughtless panic and the Saxon sword led the way, flicking the knife away to fall against the base of the wall. Plus a couple of other bits that Roger ignored.
“Ay!” shrieked Big Shit. “That fuckin’ hurt!” Confused and concerned he paused his attack and look down at his hand and his fingers; his hand first, then, after a second of searching, the fingers, that were neatly curled on the carpet.
If he had stayed looking down at his lost fingers the horizontal slash of the sword would have hit the side of his head, probably separating his ear into upper and lower halves. Instead he rose and looked up. The sword was not very sharp any more. It did not slice into his neck, just sort of bashed its way in and stopped before meeting any spine bones.
It was still very effective.
Big Shit crashed sideways under the force and fell over the footstool, landing across the easy chair. The spray of blood from the wide hole under his chin catherine-wheeled up the room, over the ceiling and then rained down over everything in rhythmic pulses. Big Shit thrust his hand up and tried to press his fingers on the wound, but his fingers stayed stubbornly unhelpful on the carpet. The other, complete, hand tried to pull him out of the chair to continue the attack but his heart wasn’t having any of it and unilaterally resigned from the fight. The spray of blood stopped at once and just flowed out gently as he slid gracefully off the chair and onto the now-totally-ruined rug, which had also been quite newly purchased.
Little Shit said something like: “Fuckin’ fuck, you fucker.” Or it might have been “Fuck you, you fuckin’ fucker.” Or similar.
At that point Roger should have said, “I hope my last words would be a bit more intelligent than that.” But he didn’t. He was now aware that he needed two dead bodies. One dead body and one not-quite-dead body was a sure recipe for trouble farther down the line.
Little Shit had temporarily replaced his scalp back on the top of his skull with one hand and was jerkily trying to get up off the ground with from support the other. The waterfall of blood across his eyes was a serious hindrance.
Roger had a short time to consider what he was about to do. Could he now call this self-defence? Was a sword versus a cheap Taiwanese DVD player self-defence? The law seemed to support Home-Owners over Burglars.
What would the heroes in the books do?
Roger remembered.
He took the sword hilt in both hands and pointed the dangerous spiky bit down at Little Shit. He first aimed its tip at Little Shit’s chest, but had no idea where the human heart was, not exactly, so moved it up to the little hollow at the base of Little Shit’s throat, and leaned forward.
The skin indented under the blunted blade. Little Shit pulled back. Roger leant harder. Little Shit was now pressed against the TV again, making it slide back and bang against the wallpaper. Roger leant harder. Little Shit made choking, coughing sounds then grabbed at the blade with both hands. The scalp flap slapped down over his face. Now that the eyes were hidden the job was easier.
Roger pressed harder. The skin gave way silently and the sword scrunched through the cartilage and gristle. Blood pooled and overflowed the hollow.
Roger put his chest against the pommel of the sword and leant on it heavily. He could feel every vibration of the blade as it parted the muscle, every movement of the man as he struggled to get away from the pain. The spray of red spit coming from Little Shit’s mouth suddenly stopped as the windpipe ceased to function but he still kept struggling, his feet slipping in the wetness of the rug.
The sudden resistance must be Little Shit’s backbone. How gross.
By twisting the blade into a more horizontal position Roger could imagine its tip pushing between the vertebrae. With a grunt he put all his weight on it. The blade resisted, grated, then suddenly moved on.
Little Shit died. No twitching. Nerves severed. Just died and flopped like a sack of spuds. The blade was pulled from Roger’s wet hands as the scraggy body slumped to the floor.
“Shit”, said Roger. “Shit, shit, shit.”
It would take him days to clean the carpet. If ever.
He looked at Big Shit. The chair was also ruined. Was it a removable cover? The footstool was probably cleanable.
He looked more widely. Large areas were sprayed or pooled with red. Even the ceiling.
“Shit and shit.”
He pulled out his handkerchief and wiped his face and then his hands. In resignation he just dropped the scarlet handkerchief and watched it land among the mess.
“What the hell is that?”
He leant closer in disbelief.
Fingers.
Two and a bit.
Filthy nails; long, thick, filthy, unkept nails.
As if British Gas would let someone like that be their public face.
Bloody idiot must think we’re all stupid.
A sudden wave of what can only be called ‘shit and bollocks; now what?’ flooded over Roger. He stared at the bodies. Something was missing. Something important. Roger realised what it was; it was any sort of guilt or remorse or conscience.
Then he began to consider all the old people who had been robbed and cheated by the pair, and of the dozens more that now would not be robbed and cheated, all saved by … saved by …. He realised he needed to hold the sword for this bit. He slid over to Little Shit and, with one foot against the body to stop it sliding about, wriggled and tugged at the sword until it came free. As he twisted it suddenly came loose. A long section of the tip had snapped off and could be seen in the wound.
Cheap foreign rubbish.
Roger looked at the remaining section. There were bits on it. Pieces of broken bone? Cartilage?
Whatever. He held it in the air.
Dozens of old-age pensioners – senior citizens? – saved from misery and poverty by ‘The Sword Of ... Roger’?
That certainly didn’t have the heroic ring he felt he deserved. What was the sword called anyway?
He held it closer, but tilted down so the slime and bits continued their sluggish flow away from his hand. Nothing to give it a real name. No engravings of dragons. No symbols. He held it a bit closer. Made in China didn’t really cut it.
What to call it?
BRAIN-BITER?
HELM-CLEAVER?
SHIT-KILLER?
Definitely not.
He looked close again then gave it a small shake. The half-blade wobbled cheaply in its hilt.
“I’d call it a pile of crap, to be honest.”
The blade was ruined; the cutting edge so battered and damaged it wouldn’t even cut cheese, should your sense of hygiene be low enough to permit such a thing.
What were those bits stuck to it? He wiped it on the top of the easy-chair and laid it respectfully on the sideboard. Even if it was a pile of crap and not fit for anything ever again it would always mean something to Roger. His first weapon. His first death. His first TWO deaths! He smiled. Yeah. Two in as many minutes. Or less. Two in one minute! He couldn’t wait to tell ….
Well, nobody, obviously. He looked at the limp Shits. Now what? There was already a smell that was not welcome in a modern dwelling, even in Chard, and Big Shit seemed to be leaking brownness from the ankles of his overalls.
Living up to his name. Disgusting people. Come into people’s houses and shit all over the carpet.
Little Shit? No problem there yet. More self-control for the moment. Probably more regular with his bowel movements in life.
Bin bags. That was the first thing. Under the sink.
Ϯ
While Roger slipped out to the kitchen another pair of eyes watched his front door.
Outside in the road, Chamonee (as in the ski resort but not spelled properly), Chamonee slowly moved the car closer to the end of the road where she had last seen Big Shit (proper name Rich, who she had been told was her dad) and Steve (her current boyfriend, if you didn’t count Darren, or Karl, or that old bloke at Chazzer’s hen night with the new £20 notes).
Due to the time spent deeply studying the ‘CELEBRITY BREAST SURGERY NIGHTMARES REVEALED IN CENTRE PAGE SPREAD’ she had not been following her very simple instruction to watch the street. In her defence she had kept the engine running as told. But only because it was a chilly night.
She didn’t even want to be there; was it her fault that Rich had lost all the money he owed to some serious-shit bad-guys from London? Arse-hole. How many DVD players would her dad have to nick to find that sort of money?
She stared through the drizzle-blurred windscreen. Which house had they gone into?
No idea.
Everything seemed quiet. Give them another five minutes.
She thoughtlessly picked her nose then yelped loudly as she ruptured the scab on her septic nose-piercing.
Ϯ
Luckily Roger had a new roll of Tesco bin bags.
Little Shit looked absurd with just the bottom half of his legs and his head and shoulders inside the bags. Scissors and duct tape were needed to get more plastic round his central bits.
After the first experiment wrapping Little Shit the next body was a bit easier, though the smell was a distraction. Roger looked for some air freshener spray but could only find furniture polish so he sprayed that over Big Shit. Didn’t really help.
It was fully dark when he seriously began to think about where he was going to put the bodies. It was normally as much as he could do to take the plastic bag of giblets out of the turkey at Christmas, so dismembering two bodies was not going to happen, even with a chain saw or wood-chipper, neither of which he owned.
And God knows what diseases people like that carried. Probably Aids if they were – as Roger suspected – druggies.
He had a basic understanding of the principals of taxidermy but no real concept of how to do it, and anyway who would want these two ugly Shits stuffed and hanging around their house forever?